Subscribe

August 18, 2011

The Right to Fashion Our Lives How We Want

I was going to comment on this article in the New York Times, "The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy," but I think the horror of it speaks more clearly for itself than I ever could. (If you can stomach reading the whole article, I think it's an important read.) The story is about the increasing number of women who are choosing to end the life of one of their twins because they only want one:

Consider the choice of which fetus to eliminate: if both appear healthy (which is typical with twins), doctors aim for whichever one is easier to reach. If both are equally accessible, the decision of who lives and who dies is random. To the relief of patients, it’s the doctor who chooses — with one exception. If the fetuses are different sexes, some doctors ask the parents which one they want to keep.

At first, "reductions" were only done for medical reasons—i.e., to save the lives of the other unborn children. But since our culture can offer no consistent argument as to why the deaths of these children shouldn't be obtained for other reasons, the practice has become just another way for women to design their perfect lives.

So here are a couple stories to give a face to what happens when we decide that “ethics evolve with technology,” as one doctor put it.

["This is not what I want for my life"] was the thinking of Dr. Naomi Bloomfield, an obstetrician near Albany who found out she was pregnant with twins when her first child was not quite a year old. “I couldn’t have imagined reducing twins for nonmedical reasons,” she said, “but I had an amnio and would have had an abortion if I found out that one of the babies had an anomaly, even if it wasn’t life-threatening. I didn’t want to raise a handicapped child. Some people would call that selfish, but I wouldn’t. Parents who abort for an anomaly just don’t want that life for themselves, and it’s their prerogative to fashion their lives how they want. Is terminating two to one really any different morally?”

(No, it isn't. It's just easier to see it for what it really is.)

Evans estimates that the majority of doctors who perform reductions will not go below twins. Shelby Van Voris was pregnant with triplets when she discovered this for herself. After she and her husband tried for three years to get pregnant, they went to a fertility doctor near their home in Savannah, Ga. He put Shelby, then 30, on fertility drugs, and when that didn’t work, he ramped things up with injections. By then, her husband, a 33-year-old Army officer, had been deployed to Iraq. He left behind three vials of sperm, and she was artificially inseminated. “You do weird things when mortars are flying at your husband’s head,” she said. She soon found out she was carrying triplets. Frantic, she yelled at the doctor: “This is not an option for us! I want only one!”

Her fertility specialist referred her to a doctor in Atlanta who did reductions. But when Shelby called, the office manager told her that she would have to pay extra for temporary staff to assist with the procedure, because the regular staff refused to reduce pregnancies below twins. She contacted three more doctors, and in each case was told: not below two. “It was horrible,” she says. “I felt like the pregnancy was a monster, and I just wanted it out, but because we tried for so long, abortion wasn’t an option. My No. 1 priority was to be the best mom I could be, but how was I supposed to juggle two newborns or two screaming infants while my husband was away being shot at? We don’t have family just sitting around waiting to get called to help me with a baby.”

Eventually, she heard about Evans and flew to New York for the procedure. “I said, ‘You choose whoever is going to be safe and healthy,’ ” she says. “I didn’t give him any other criteria. I didn’t choose gender. None of that was up for grabs, because I had to make it as ethically O.K. for me as I could. But I wanted only one.”

She paid $6,500 for the reduction and left Evans’s office incredibly relieved. “I went out on that street with my mother and jumped up and down saying: ‘I’m pregnant! I’m pregnant!’ And then I went and bought baby clothes for the first time.”

Today, her daughter is 2½ years old. Shelby intends to tell her about the reduction someday, to teach her that women have choices, even if they’re sometimes difficult.

Eventually, she heard about Evans and flew to New York for the procedure. “I said, ‘You choose whoever is going to be safe and healthy,’ ” she says. “I didn’t give him any other criteria. I didn’t choose gender. None of that was up for grabs, because I had to make it as ethically O.K. for me as I could. But I wanted only one.”

Aside from how obviously wrong this all is, I can't help but place myself in the shoes of the kid that lives. When he, or she, is lonely - or an only child - and wonders if his sibling would have been a good friend to spend a childhood with. My own brother (not a twin) has always been there for me. We've been each other's best men.

Then there's the big "what if" question: "What if I was the one who was killed? Would my own mother not weep for me or even remember my own short, silent life? How does she think about the brother or sister I never knew?" It places serious doubt in the relationship between a child and his mother. Can you imagine the guilt at having not been the one who was killed?

Finally, it sends a strange message to the surviving child: "I am arbitrarily worth more than other people." Try living your life with that conflicted notion.

Ppr, while this isn't new for humanity, it's shockingly new for our particular culture. A hundred years ago (or even less!), an article like this one would have been in a horror novel...and possibly shunned as too grotesque even then. So I was speaking in this particular sense rather than from the perspective of all humanity.

My point is not that this isn't a horror. My point is it's yet another example of the depravity of man that goes back to the fall. Man isn't getting more depraved, he became totally depraved at the fall. China and other developing countries have been mass aborting for gender selection for some time. Again, I violently agree with the expressions of horror... this has been going on for some time and is not inconsistent with what we know about the human condition. At the same time we express our disgust, we should be sharpening our response to those like Peter Singer who argue that these actions are not immoral in any sense.

When you breed rodents, expect snakes looking for lunch. Am I the only one not surprised by this development? It is the land of opportunity, isn't it? Why is anyone surprised by opportunistic behavior in all its diverse forms? Expect more of it in many different twisted forms. I do and I will not be disappointed.

I understand your impulse to think that this is my position. I would likely make the same assumption in your shoes. Actually, the point was more along the lines that capitalism is not the cause of children being murdered, it merely facilitates the fallen human nature.

If you are wondering, nobody ever expected the American form of government to work without faith. The ordered freedom does not exist without morality and morality requires belief, saith the Founders. It was not proposed that a form of government (much less an economic philosophy) would make man good. That kind of utopian dream belongs to other thinkers.

My wife and I have been struggling with unexplained infertility for 5 years and I cannot imagine the thought of reduction even entering our minds if we were blessed with triplets or twins. Would it be difficult? Yes! Would it be immoral to kill one or two to get "what we want"? YES!

I also could not believe the hypocrisy that this woman said she couldn't have an abortion because she had been trying for so long, but then jumped for joy when she was suddenly only pregnant with one child. How is what she did not an abortion?

We'd be in the same club, ToNy. Of course, when it is Christians saying IVF in itself is problematic (as I've argued on other boards) then, of course, the secularists charge that Christians are trying to impose their morality to interfere with other people's business.

Do you not think you'd be among the first to jump out and accuse the anti-science Christians of trying to interfere with the happiness of that poor 46 year old?
The issue presents some of the same problems as ESCR. Have you mentioned how this nauseates you?

Daron
"As does every institution and system devised by fallen man; witness the greater number of murdered children in non-capitalist countries. "

You get it. That is exactly my point. That is why all this finger pointing combined with patting of self on the back for being better than "that other system" is so utterly pointless. We are all in the same sinking boat of humanity and the only thing that matters is that which the bible makes central that pulls us out of the water.

"Rather, what I find odd is that Christians are so blase about IVF and fertility treatments. There seems to be a lack of understanding about just how bizarre the world of infertility has become."

Not all of us hold to that blase attitude. I, personally, think that IVF was the wrong road to go down. It presents too many problems that touch on my moral nerve. The alternative of adoption and revision to some of the legal wrangling over it would make it possible for infertile couples to have kids easier. I think that some mental fog regarding this issue is at least partly responsible for the choice of IVF over adoption.

Easy example. There are lots of corrupt police in a flawed system of law enforcement and having police won't perfectly protect everyone (even from the police themselves). But it is still better to have them than not. And it is better to enforce law (in general) than to break it.

I think what you are saying, and I actually agree with you, is that one shouldn't throw out the baby with the bath water. It is not a matter of what is to be done with a system or systems that bothers me, but this competitive and braggadocio claims being made about one or another when I clearly know that none on the list will pass God's muster. It isn't that I think that some kind of utopia is actually possible under present circumstances it is just that all this apparent pride and arrogance expressed through "my system beats your system" rubs me a bit the wrong way. I understand the need for some kind of system and it may be true that one is better than the other, but let the system speak for itself as it is put to practice. When someone sees a product doing what it is supposed to be doing, you don't need a salesman to convince you it is worth buying.

Attempts to persuade are not the same as pride, arrogance, and braggadocio. Arguing for what you believe to be true because you think everyone would be better off if you could convince them with enough evidence and arguments is not a bad thing. Otherwise, this whole site would be competitive pride and arrogance! And I know you don't think that. Why interpret such argument as pride and arrogance in the market arena but not in the arena of religion? You should offer the same benefit of the doubt to people who are arguing for all sorts of things they believe to be true.

Secondly, though you say discussing the system of government is pointless, you bring this issue up all the time--even when it's not related to the post. And I would actually appreciate it if you wouldn't do that because it distracts from the topic being discussed.

Amy
I appreciate your point of view. I simply prefer the unvarnished truth and that includes the fact that every system can carry with it seeds that result in promotion of things like the abhorrent practice of killing the unborn. If that means that I should take my share of responsibility by at least admitting the fact, I am willing to do that. Enough said.